Chuck Shepherd's News Of The Weird

"Coming Up Next! The Resurrection!
Live!" "If the Messiah descends from the Mount of Olives as foretold
in the Bible," wrote the Los Angeles
Times in an October dispatch from Jerusalem, the two largest Christian
television networks in the United States promise to cover the arrival live from
a hilltop in the city. Daystar Television has been beaming a 24/7 web-cam view.
In September, Trinity Broadcasting Network purchased the building next door to
Daystar's. Trinity has already begun staging live and pre-recorded programs
using the broad expanse of the Holy Land city as background.

School
of Soft Knocks

(1) Richard Parker Jr., 36, was
arrested in New London, Conn., in September after allegedly hitting a man
several times with a pillow, then taking his car keys and driving off. (2) An
18-year-old college student who had moved to New York City only three weeks
earlier was knocked briefly unconscious in September when a mattress fell 30
stories to the sidewalk from a building on Broad Street in Manhattan.

Redneck
Chronicles

In October, eight units in the
Clearview Apartments in Holland Township, Mich., were destroyed—with two dozen
people displaced—when one resident, preparing a meal of squirrel, had a propane
torch accident as he was attempting to burn off the rodent's fur.

Can't
Possibly Be True

Once again, in September, the upscale
Standard Hotel, in New York City's Lower Manhattan, made headlines for the
views it provides to amazed pedestrians. In 2009, it was the hotel's
floor-to-ceiling windows showcasing amorous couples at play (unless the guests
knew to draw the curtains), which seemed to especially delight out-of-towners
seeking inexpensive entertainment. Now, a September 2012 report in the New York Daily News revealed that the
restrooms at the hotel's Boom Boom Room restaurant posed a bigger problem: no
curtains at all. As one restroom user from Australia said, "Sitting on the
royal throne, you don't expect a public viewing." On the other hand, the Daily News noted one gentleman relieving
himself and waving merrily at the gawking crowd below.

Inexplicable

Recurring Theme: In Ventura, Calif., in
September, a scammer bilked victims out of money by assuring them that he could
double their cash (in this case, $14,000) merely by spraying it with a secret
chemical. (The victims had to wait several hours for their newly doubled cash
to dry. By the time they eventually discovered that the scammer had taken the
cash, the perp was long gone.) Perhaps the weirdest aspect of the scam is that
people who are so unsophisticated as to fall for it somehow managed to amass,
in this tight economy, $14,000 in cash.

Unclear
on the Concept

n
Punishment Must Fit the Crime: In September, Britain's Leeds Crown Court meted
out "punishment" to a 25-year-old man convicted of sneaking into the
changing room of China's female swimmers during the Olympics: He was banned—for
five years—from entering any female toilet or changing room.

n
In October, Britain's Gravesham Borough Council, weary of neighbors' complaints
about the noise and smell from Roy Day's brood of 20 birds, ordered him to
remove them and find them a new home. Day, a member of the National Pigeon
Racing Association, told reporters of the futility of the order: "They are
homing pigeons." "They will just fly straight back to him,” said a
friend. “He has never lost one."

The
Weirdo-American Community

Recurring Theme: Eric Carrier, 24, was
charged once again in September, in Hampton, N.H., with attempting to commit
indecent exposure through a scheme of faking a brain injury so that he could
hire an in-home nurse to change his diaper. He was similarly charged in July
2011 in Hooksett, N.H., after soliciting five women on Craigslist, and
convicted in July 2012.